Covert Metaphor

How are you with people? Everyone who starts out learning NLP, advanced language patterns, rapport techniques, and so on seem to forget the basics of simply connecting to people. They get so caught up in trying to mirror and match, calibrate and track eye accessing cues, that they in my honest opinion start to look like freaks. You can do those things unconsciously anyways, but I’ll write about that tomorrow.

A great place to start is to be willing to make everyone you come across smile or laugh. If you can do that, and you know your outcome, you’ve gotten most of it fairly covered. If you can get someone to smile and laugh, you’re building rapport, and you didn’t spend thousands on the ultimate workshop. You give what you get.

That reminds me of a friend who was always making sure everyone else around him wasn’t struggling; even strangers. He was having a tough time finding a job. He was behind on rent, but he didn’t seem to mind. We’d all offered to help, but he said everything would be fine. He would of helped us, and we all knew it. Anyways, he was walking home one day, and noticed a young woman. She was slouched on the side of a building, looking extremely tired and distraught. People walked by and stared, but went on their way.

My friend has a good intuition about people, and he felt something wasn’t right–aside from her expensive looking clothes being a tad bit dirty. He approached the young woman and began to talk with her. She told him, “I’m a manic depressive.” So either she or someone else had given her the identity of “manic depressive”, and she’s accepted this label. So he said, “You’re not a manic depressive. How can you be that? You might have this thing called manic depression. People have habits, but habits can be thrown away.” And he slowly talks her out of her state of extreme depression until she calls gets enough energy up to call her Father. Her Father is very grateful and interestingly enough owns a successful company. What do you think he does? Yes, he gives my friend a job. Funny how things in life work out like that. You give what you get.

So, back to this smile and laughter thing. I’m going to give you a challenge here. If you are just getting into this stuff, this will be some of the best advice anyone will give you. Be willing to play with this. Every time you speak or interact with people, try to get them to smile or laugh. Some people will be very difficult, but try it anyways. Put yourself in a state of laughter and pull others into it as well. See how many ways you can get people to laugh and smile. Get good at this and the rest will come easy.

metaphorlaughtersmileLife

admin :: Jun.18.2007 :: metaphor :: 3 Comments »

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